Playing LA Noire you can feel it being pulled in a dozen directions at all times. Its core plot is reaching for noir, police procedural, period drama, and crime epic. Its mechanics attempt to combine GTA navigation, Ace Attorney puzzle-solving, Assassin's Creed tailing, and a much-hyped interrogation system. It aspires to be cinematic but authentic, literary but ludic, grand but focused. None of these are problems in isolation, and a handful of times it feels like it is achieving most of what it's aiming for. Yet rather than feeling like a cohesive meld, we have a hospital ward where each element lies on a bed of Procrustes; stretched out or cut down to fit a meagre pattern.
Let's look at the narrative genres it dips into. Noir was described by Roger Ebert as "[t]he most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic." LA Noire has plenty of the dark but little of the light, though I do wonder how well video games can present such a worldview. How can you insinuate there is seediness behind every door when 99% of doors can be seen and walked up to but never opened because nothing is behind them? How much can it feel like the player is in a naked city with eight million stories, when there's only about twenty NPC voice lines looping everywhere Phelps goes? The degree of openness and detail LA Noire aims for feels incompatible with maintaining the illusions and fogginess of noir; there are no ambiguities to fill with imagination or implication, something is either there fully realized or it's a cheap facade.
This lack of a sense of noirish possibility is further complicated by the game's aim to be historical fiction about the Los Angeles Police Department. Anyone aspiring to some degree of honesty should strive to represent the LAPD for what it is: one of the worst peacetime institutions ever organized by humans. LA Noire obliges in the broad strokes but pulls too many punches to be true to history. Phelps and his partners are racist, sexist, violent, and corrupt, though it's all ultimately superficial. We witness some slurs and beatings, but also every act of violence is provoked and in self-defense. There's blackmail and threats, but evidence is never planted nor false confessions coerced. We are aware of graft and misconduct but only in connection to the main plot and not as a daily function of the LAPD. My point is not that the game should be Dirty Cop Simulator 1947. Rather, by not actually shocking the player with just how evil the LAPD could be, the player is not actually made to question what they thought they knew. I would also maybe feel less affronted if not for the timing of the game's setting, a few years before Dragnet would forge the foundation of post-WWII copaganda around the LAPD. What came out in the wash is merely a somewhat critical piece of detective fiction with some nods to history.
Except is it good detective fiction? The game is predominantly structured as an episodic police procedural, with connections between cases gradually emerging in fairly predictable ways (with significant deflation from the non-diegetic newspaper scenes). When faced with either embracing the detailed tedium of The Wire or the sensational mystery-solving of Sherlock Holmes, the game doesn't commit to either. Again there is the noir angle, but it disposes of supporting characters too rapidly to make the ongoing mystery cut through the noise of "drive to scene, find reference to location, call R&I for address, drive there, talk to someone, repeat". To the extent that LA Noire subverts the procedural through its homicide and arson desk sequences, it feels somewhat hollow. At no point did I feel anything Phelps might conceivably feel: pressure to lock someone up, a weight on my conscience over how a case was handled, a need to break procedure to catch the culprit. Instead of being a game that's compellingly mundane or full of engaging puzzles, LA Noire is just about mundane puzzles.
Much of these issues coalesce around LA Noire's interrogation system--its sui generis mechanic. My problems lie less with the facial animation (which is usually good and occasionally great even a decade-plus on) or the simplicity (the difficulty curve flattens early when you realize it all boils down to accusing when you have evidence to contradict what they just said or doubting when you don't but they won't meet your gaze and otherwise choosing truth), both of which weaken the effectiveness but forgivably so. The damning sin is the music cue and the ✓or X appearing immediately after you finish a question, worsened by the many occasions where a correct choice doesn't give you much more than an incorrect choice. It undermines the ambiguity of noir, the immersion of historical fiction, and the suspense of detective gaming all in one fell swoop. Added to the tedium of actually proceeding through cases--which, again, could be saved by a deeper faithfulness to history or procedural structures--and you have a golden opportunity fumbled multiple times over.
Finally, the gap between how much of 1947 Los Angeles is represented physically and atmospherically versus how much of it is represented socially, economically, and institutionally is palpable. Everywhere you look, you'll find assets with remarkably immersive period detail and lovingly rendered interiors. I pulled into a parking lot and an episode of the Jack Benny Program began playing on the car radio and just... didn't stop. It was a full episode, minus the Lucky Strike ads. I probably listened for half the run-time, genuinely amazed a game would simulate something like this. Films and novels basically cannot replicate this sort of beguiling closeness to the past; it reminded me more of handling archival material than watching The Master. If nothing else, LA Noire deserves praise for these moments and details. But stand anywhere for a similar amount of time to observe the people of this world and you'll get whiplash.
Obviously, as already discussed, there is the omnipresent issue of the world being facades all the way down. But consider the NPC chatter. This is the one technical arena where I feel justified ragging on LA Noire because it is in no way a studio being hampered by budget or technology. They got people in the booth to record lines. Could have had them say anything! Yet they chose to make said chatter completely facile and atonal, predominantly acknowledgements of Cole's recent exploits and jokes ripped from an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader or spent Christmas crackers. I could have forgiven stiff animations or minimal interactivity, but neglecting to give this chatter any hint of a larger world is hugely disappointing. Every diner being an immersive theatre production unto itself would be unreasonable, but chatter that at least implies a communal presence could have gone a long way. I have to imagine by the fifteenth time playtesters heard a cop express a desire for a .45 so they can stop them in one round, they felt the missed opportunity.
Despite all this, I consider LA Noire more a noble failure than a trainwreck. You simply do not get games that reach like this or wade into these themes often. And for one shining case--the Studio Secretary Murder--it managed to pull the stars into alignment and showcase the vision they were seemingly going for. Noah Caldwell-Gervais described it as a genre orphan, and that is far more tragic than any of the game's own shortcomings. Some team should have revisited and refined these ideas, finding a more thoughtful balance of themes and mechanics. My guess is if they ever do, it probably won't be by having you play as a cop.
Let's look at the narrative genres it dips into. Noir was described by Roger Ebert as "[t]he most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic." LA Noire has plenty of the dark but little of the light, though I do wonder how well video games can present such a worldview. How can you insinuate there is seediness behind every door when 99% of doors can be seen and walked up to but never opened because nothing is behind them? How much can it feel like the player is in a naked city with eight million stories, when there's only about twenty NPC voice lines looping everywhere Phelps goes? The degree of openness and detail LA Noire aims for feels incompatible with maintaining the illusions and fogginess of noir; there are no ambiguities to fill with imagination or implication, something is either there fully realized or it's a cheap facade.
This lack of a sense of noirish possibility is further complicated by the game's aim to be historical fiction about the Los Angeles Police Department. Anyone aspiring to some degree of honesty should strive to represent the LAPD for what it is: one of the worst peacetime institutions ever organized by humans. LA Noire obliges in the broad strokes but pulls too many punches to be true to history. Phelps and his partners are racist, sexist, violent, and corrupt, though it's all ultimately superficial. We witness some slurs and beatings, but also every act of violence is provoked and in self-defense. There's blackmail and threats, but evidence is never planted nor false confessions coerced. We are aware of graft and misconduct but only in connection to the main plot and not as a daily function of the LAPD. My point is not that the game should be Dirty Cop Simulator 1947. Rather, by not actually shocking the player with just how evil the LAPD could be, the player is not actually made to question what they thought they knew. I would also maybe feel less affronted if not for the timing of the game's setting, a few years before Dragnet would forge the foundation of post-WWII copaganda around the LAPD. What came out in the wash is merely a somewhat critical piece of detective fiction with some nods to history.
Except is it good detective fiction? The game is predominantly structured as an episodic police procedural, with connections between cases gradually emerging in fairly predictable ways (with significant deflation from the non-diegetic newspaper scenes). When faced with either embracing the detailed tedium of The Wire or the sensational mystery-solving of Sherlock Holmes, the game doesn't commit to either. Again there is the noir angle, but it disposes of supporting characters too rapidly to make the ongoing mystery cut through the noise of "drive to scene, find reference to location, call R&I for address, drive there, talk to someone, repeat". To the extent that LA Noire subverts the procedural through its homicide and arson desk sequences, it feels somewhat hollow. At no point did I feel anything Phelps might conceivably feel: pressure to lock someone up, a weight on my conscience over how a case was handled, a need to break procedure to catch the culprit. Instead of being a game that's compellingly mundane or full of engaging puzzles, LA Noire is just about mundane puzzles.
Much of these issues coalesce around LA Noire's interrogation system--its sui generis mechanic. My problems lie less with the facial animation (which is usually good and occasionally great even a decade-plus on) or the simplicity (the difficulty curve flattens early when you realize it all boils down to accusing when you have evidence to contradict what they just said or doubting when you don't but they won't meet your gaze and otherwise choosing truth), both of which weaken the effectiveness but forgivably so. The damning sin is the music cue and the ✓or X appearing immediately after you finish a question, worsened by the many occasions where a correct choice doesn't give you much more than an incorrect choice. It undermines the ambiguity of noir, the immersion of historical fiction, and the suspense of detective gaming all in one fell swoop. Added to the tedium of actually proceeding through cases--which, again, could be saved by a deeper faithfulness to history or procedural structures--and you have a golden opportunity fumbled multiple times over.
Finally, the gap between how much of 1947 Los Angeles is represented physically and atmospherically versus how much of it is represented socially, economically, and institutionally is palpable. Everywhere you look, you'll find assets with remarkably immersive period detail and lovingly rendered interiors. I pulled into a parking lot and an episode of the Jack Benny Program began playing on the car radio and just... didn't stop. It was a full episode, minus the Lucky Strike ads. I probably listened for half the run-time, genuinely amazed a game would simulate something like this. Films and novels basically cannot replicate this sort of beguiling closeness to the past; it reminded me more of handling archival material than watching The Master. If nothing else, LA Noire deserves praise for these moments and details. But stand anywhere for a similar amount of time to observe the people of this world and you'll get whiplash.
Obviously, as already discussed, there is the omnipresent issue of the world being facades all the way down. But consider the NPC chatter. This is the one technical arena where I feel justified ragging on LA Noire because it is in no way a studio being hampered by budget or technology. They got people in the booth to record lines. Could have had them say anything! Yet they chose to make said chatter completely facile and atonal, predominantly acknowledgements of Cole's recent exploits and jokes ripped from an Uncle John's Bathroom Reader or spent Christmas crackers. I could have forgiven stiff animations or minimal interactivity, but neglecting to give this chatter any hint of a larger world is hugely disappointing. Every diner being an immersive theatre production unto itself would be unreasonable, but chatter that at least implies a communal presence could have gone a long way. I have to imagine by the fifteenth time playtesters heard a cop express a desire for a .45 so they can stop them in one round, they felt the missed opportunity.
Despite all this, I consider LA Noire more a noble failure than a trainwreck. You simply do not get games that reach like this or wade into these themes often. And for one shining case--the Studio Secretary Murder--it managed to pull the stars into alignment and showcase the vision they were seemingly going for. Noah Caldwell-Gervais described it as a genre orphan, and that is far more tragic than any of the game's own shortcomings. Some team should have revisited and refined these ideas, finding a more thoughtful balance of themes and mechanics. My guess is if they ever do, it probably won't be by having you play as a cop.